I was hired as one of two cinematographers to travel into the Punjab region of India to shoot a documentary about the epidemic of farmer suicides. The problem is not confined to Punjab, but this region has been known as the breadbasket of India and the Indian government stands to lose the most by letting the nation know the extent of the problem there. Work done over a subset of this region over the last 20 years or so estimates 150,000 suicides. The government currently acknowledges 7.

The Scale

When we started out we would enter a small village and go to the house of a fatherless family to interview them. We would then walk across the street to the next house, and perhaps two houses down to the next. Often there were 50-60 suicides in a village, even within the same household.

The suicides themselves are the result of intense economic pressures due to a variety of governmental policies, unchecked industrialization and the so-called green revolution.

Stadiums and Water Rights

While I was there I heard it said that India may be one of the largest democracies in the world, but it is also the most corrupt. Votes are easily bought and sold. I heard firsthand from a man who was offered a literal chest full of cash to push a campaign. I met another who kept the Mercedes he was given as a souvenir. Keep in mind that in this country, while they are becoming much more common, a high end Mercedes is still like having a rocket ship in your back yard.

During my morning walks in the countryside I would occasionally wander over to a huge pink stadium that had been dropped like a giant child’s forgotten toy in the center of the otherwise green and level fields that surrounded us. I thought at first that it was a Kubaddi or Cricket field. There were high bleachers on two sides, modern showers, locker rooms, and weight rooms that were all locked. Our host explained that the complex had been built by a campaigning politician seeking local votes. It was pitched as a place for children to play. In order to maximize the voter impact, it was placed in between several villages. This made it just far enough away from all of them that it was, quite literally, never used.

Given this kind of concern for the people that elected them, it is not surprising that government leaders sold off Punjab’s water to the desert areas of neighboring Rajistan. We saw massive canals sucking water away en-masse. In the years that followed, Punjab became drier and drier. Apparently the clouds of dust we experienced there were, in fact, a relatively new phenomenon. Farmers can no longer count on the once plentiful existing water to grow crops, and have been forced to dig wells, buy pumps, and then buy fuel for those pumps, thus increasing their costs.

The Green Revolution

In an attempt to feed its ever exploding population, in the mid 70s India implemented the Green Revolution. They began using genetically modified seeds which produced much higher yields, but in turn required significantly more water. These new crops also required pesticides and chemical fertilizers that, while greatly increasing cancer rates, also greatly increased farmer cost.

Unchecked Industrialization

We visited a large river so thick with pollution that it was dark and stank so badly we had difficulty being near it. Periodically this particular river overflows its banks and kills off all of the crops in the surrounding area. There are no rights, insurance, or protection of any kind. The farmer is simply SOL.

Price Controls

Using India’s large population of poor as justification, the Indian government has fixed prices for wheat and other crops. With these artificially lowered returns and an ever-increasing input cost, the Indian farmers are effectively being forced to subsidize India’s poor population and are thus steadily being impoverished themselves.

Loan Sharks

Enter the money lenders or, more accurately, loan sharks. These gentlemen offer the farmers the loans they need to survive when a crop fails, a family member gets sick, or they need to buy more fertilizer or seeds. They regularly charge between 40% and 60% interest. When the farmers cannot make payments these men often become aggressive, illegally taking land and property, often stripping the farmers of their means of ever paying off the loans. Most of these village farmers are not educated enough to know their rights or understand the nature of the interest they are paying. The loan sharks threaten and harass them. They verbally and (I believe) physically abuse the women of the family.

Ultimately some combination of the harassment and loss of hope and dignity cause these men to give up and either drink pesticide, jump in front of trains or burn themselves alive. Their families are left behind with the debts and without a primary breadwinner. It is not uncommon for the older male children who must then take on these burdens to themselves commit suicide.

When I asked whether the men worried about the children that they left behind, I was told that the common response was, “god will take care of them”.